Monero (XMR): What You Should Know Before Investing

With more and more altcoins getting an increasing amount of attention on high-profile news sites, you’ve almost certainly heard of Monero (XMR). It’s definitely one of the most talked-about alternative currencies on the market. And while this coin has some pretty standard cryptocurrency features, its unique advantages are what sets it apart from the crowd.

For one thing, it’s seen a ton of growth lately. In the past 24 hours, it’s jumped about nine percent. Meanwhile, the past 30 days of trading have driven Monero 129 percent higher. If you bought in a year ago, you’ve seen your investment expand to the tune of 2,699 percent.

At the time of writing, this crypto-coin is the tenth most valuable on the market. At $393.89 a piece, the whole currency is worth about $6.1 billion.

What Sort of Cryptocurrency is Monero (XMR)?

This cryptocurrency was launched in a nonconventional way. Unlike many of its rival altcoins, the founders did not set aside any amount of the freshly-issued digital currency for themselves. In fact, the development team has put a lot of power into the hands of the wider community.

But if there is one thing Monero’s known for, it’s anonymity. Not that many coins have been able to offer total privacy. We all know that one of the major reasons for Bitcoin’s original development was to obscure the identities of parties engaging in a transaction – but that hasn’t exactly been the case.

To start with, the bitcoin blockchain records each individual transfer of value. These records are made public. Even though users are provided with pseudonyms in lieu of identifying addresses, their “fake” addresses aren’t too difficult to attach to real-life people. Especially with more onlookers analyzing transaction data and tracking individual users’ trends, the likelihood of using bitcoin completely anonymously has diminished.

A lot of altcoins have sprung up to tackle this problem. Cryptocurrencies like Dash (DASH), ZCash (ZEC) and Monero (XMR) have all developed platforms that attempt to better safeguard its users’ anonymity.

What’s Different about Monero (XMR)?

With Monero’s transaction protocol, every identity is obscured by default. This is done thanks to “ring signatures.” Each signature (on every transaction within this blockchain) is a jumble of a user’s account keys with some public keys already found on the blockchain. This creates a “ring” of potential users, so onlookers can’t connect each signature to a particular person.

A lot of other cryptocurrencies offer some sort of key mixing like this, but this one is the only one that covers all transactions. No individual mixed signature sticks out from the bunch.

Monero also makes use of “stealth” addresses. These are essentially disposable, one-time use addresses. They further guarantee that each transaction is untraceable.

This cryptocurrency’s total embrace of anonymity is part of what has caused its value to skyrocket so high. Are untraceable transactions and total privacy important to you? It may be time to check out the Monero (XMR) blockchain. Either way, its non-stop rising price tag isn’t showing any signs of slowing down anytime soon.

Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide, investment advice. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency.

Tim is a graduate of the University of California Los Angeles, where he has a B.A. in Global Studies with a minor in Geography/Environmental Studies. He worked for nearly two years as a Research Associate at a top investment banking software provider. He then began working as a freelance writer, covering stock market news and writing corporate content. He has been investing in and researching cryptocurrency for about a year, and has been blogging almost daily on the topic since mid-2017. Tim has contributed to both LiveBitcoinNews.com and CCN.com.